


meaning of peace

by Senkaze



Category: Naruto
Genre: (but not of the author), (not in any great detail), Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Canonical Character Death, Cultural Differences, Episode: s17e367 Hashirama and Madara, Gen, Introspection, Pre-Canon, Pre-Konoha Village, Pre-Naruto Canon Era, Reincarnation, Self-Insert, Self-Insert Hashirama, Warring States Period (Naruto), si!hashirama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:20:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28170825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senkaze/pseuds/Senkaze
Summary: “The worst thing about being reincarnated are the constant comparisons to what was left behind.”Hashirama can’t help but compare his life to what he knew Before.(Self-Insert Hashirama)
Relationships: Senju Hashirama & Uchiha Madara
Comments: 37
Kudos: 55





	meaning of peace

**Author's Note:**

> Death and war in Naruto as viewed through a modern perspective.
> 
> Content Warning: Death, Grief and guilt, Passing mention of bullets
> 
> Quotes are from Naruto Shippuden: Episode 367. They’re taken pretty much exactly how they were in the episode, with a couple of tweaks to words so it fit in the fic.

Losing a brother wasn’t a new feeling for Hashirama. What was odd was that this was the first time it’s happened to him. 

At least in this life. 

Watching Kawarama’s coffin being tenderly lowered into the ground, Hashirama’s thoughts weren’t focussed where they should have been. On the loss of his precious little brother. 

On the second brother he’s ever lost. 

The worst thing about being reincarnated are the constant comparisons to what was left behind, his thoughts dissociating and straying away from the reality of what lay before him. As if he didn’t think about it, he could pretend that Kawarama was still waiting back for him at the compound. That this was all a dream, a- a- hallucination, and he’d wake up feeling none the worst.

Who was he kidding? The only constant in life is death. To live is to die (is to live again, at least in Hashirama’s case).

When Hashirama had died the first time, it had been quick and painless. Physically painless. In the split second before the bullet had hit, he’d only had just enough time to turn his head. He caught his brother’s eye, panic and fear and hopelessness marred his features.

Then they’d heard the gunshot.

It was true, what people said about gunshots. That is, that it’s too late for you. If you hear the gun go off, then you’re already dead. It certainly had been that way for them. An uncharacteristically violent end to an otherwise unremarkable life.

He’d only just had just enough time to regret that his brother was sentenced to the same fate he was, until he all he knew was the spray of blood, a single heartbeat, and then nothing. 

If only he could have saved his brother. Either of his brothers. 

Hashirama could only hope that the Uchiha that killed Kawarama gave him a merciful death. That he got as good of a death and died as painlessly as possible as Hashirama did in another life. 

Truly, it was a strange world he lived in, where prayers were spent on dying instead of living. 

* * *

Hashirama stands with the Senju across the field from the Uchiha, as tense and silent and waiting, like two animals assessing the other before leaping forward, claws extended and hungering for blood.

His brother would have hated this. But Hashirama wasn’t talking about Tobirama or Itama and Kawarama. (He knows intimately the sharp pang and dull ache of losing a brother three times over.) They’d never known anything but the endless cycle of violence, pain and vengeance. Of sharp looks and too sharp swords. Of children training themselves to sleep with one eye open and a hand clutching tightly to a weapon instead of a teddy bear. 

They’d never know the ease of simply walking up to a stranger and asking for directions, because if you chose the wrong stranger here, one of you was going to end up dead. They’d never know the freedom of having the world at your fingertips at the push of a button, because they’d been born in a world where information is currency and education is coveted more than the horde of a dragon from the fairytales of Before. 

_“To raise one’s child to become a full-fledged shinobi is a parent’s love!”_

He’d failed. Older brothers were born first, to protect the little brothers that came after him. And now he only had one brother left. One last chance to make sure his brother lives and _continues_ doing so, even if it means living in war. Never knowing when you’ll be deployed, or when the next attack will be, or if you and your comrades will be lucky enough to make it home.

God, they didn’t even know what they were fighting about. It was the first thing he’d done: research the hows and the whys. The habit to never trust anything at face value ingrained in him from a world that exists only in his memories, where conflicting biased news reports and misinformation from social media posts warred for your attention. In the end he had spent countless hours pouring over ancient dusty tomes and subtle and sometimes outright prodding in conversations (he learnt to never be found questioning what the Elders and Clan Head said). What he found was a centuries old feud that killed and killed and killed, and no one even knew why because the reason was lost to time. 

That was the saddest part, Hashirama thinks.

And now, here he was. Still standing at the cusp of yet another battlefield and he hadn’t even reached puberty yet. Off to mindlessly slaughter the enemy and his voice hasn’t even cracked yet. Off to destroy families with one flick of his battle worn sword, a proud and prestigious weapon carefully handed down through the ages and he hadn’t even started shaving yet. It was polished and sharpened and mended again and again so it can continue to snuff out precious sparks of life. Just like how they’re moulded into the perfect shinobi.

Hashirama hates it too. 

The endless clashes. The eternal suffering. He’d never wanted to be a soldier - a warrior, in either lifetime. Hashirama was lucky the first time around - a burgeoning environmental activist and a staunch defender of human rights, with many accomplishments to his name.

He wasn’t so lucky now. 

Hashirama’s life was planned out from the moment he was conceived. He was to be a warrior, to die on the battlefield and bring honour to the Senju. He was born the heir to the Senju, and with that birthright he was supposed to lead the clan into glorious battle. To lead his family to their deaths.

_“Shinobi are born into the world to fight and die in battle.”_

But his dream. Oh, he dreamt of recreating what he’d known Before. Of a world at peace. He’d written and scribbled and scrapped and rewrote endless pages of peace treaties and infrastructure for a city filled with people from all walks of life. Where former enemies would stand next to each other with a smile in their faces instead of bloodstains. In an imaginary city that will never be. 

He stares down at the Uchiha across the field, ugly snarls looking back, like the ones that his kinsman wore. All of them - Uchiha and Senju - were waiting for the command to charge. To end as many of them as they could before they themselves were killed. 

He knew intimately the cold grip of fear that pervades through the shock of realisation as you die. The pain of leaving your loved ones behind. Of failure.

He abhorred murder. _Thou shalt not kill_ , the bible said, and as any good Christian (or any decent person, really) he’d lived by those words. It wasn’t hard. The morals of the society he’d lived in only reinforced them. Disputes could be solved through a number of non-violent and non-fatal ways in accordance with the laws and morality of a society that sought peace and strived to do what was right. Even though there were differing opinions on what ‘right’ was. 

It was a world where arguments could be solved through words and not blood. His brother had always been good at that, with a honeyed tongue and possessing wit as subtly deceptive as a paper cut. A tiny thing, often unnoticed until much later when it is discovered and summarily cannot be ignored. 

Now, he’d left that life behind along with his brother and his final breath. It was hard to justify leaving someone alive when they could survive and heal only to track you down later and enact a very painful revenge. Or worse, they could come after someone whom you hold dear in your heart. 

But it was much harder to justify ending someone’s entire existence on the basis of a mere possibility. Of seeing the life leave their eyes as they struggled for just one more breath. Of seeing raw potential wither away and die in front of you.

Hashirama had gotten something that no one here had. He’d seen that there was another way of life. Not only that, but he’d gotten lucky and lived it. An entire world of people where indicators of strength, power and battlefield prowess weren’t the governing body of thought. Where the strongest weren’t automatically the leaders, but rather it was logic, science and diplomacy that led entire societies to prosperity. Where countries could live together in harmony.

Hashirama hears the signal: a long blow of the Jinkai, and then the Senju are rushing forward as one, all baying for blood.

He methodically clears his mind. The time for dark thoughts is now over and any distraction on the battlefield was fatal more often than not. He rushes forward with the rest of the Senju, the wind and battle cries ringing in his ears as chakra floods his body, keeping him strong and fast. 

They meet in the middle with the ringing sounds of a hundred swords-on-swords and jutsu vs. jutsu from the sea of Uchiha and Senju. They mix on the battlefield as well as water and potassium.

Hashirama just wants it to _stop_. 

* * *

Madara never fails to meet him on the blood-soaked battlefield. In the distance, Hashirama can hear the groans of the dying and the wailing of those whom they leave behind. 

He’d thought he found a kindred spirit in the boy (too young to have that _look_ in his eyes - eyes too old and jaded to fit in his youthful face) when they’d met at the banks of the Naka river. His friendship was freedom, a breath of fresh air from the restricting rules and unbending traditions of the Senju.

_“I’m gonna make it this time...Hey! You stood behind me on purpose to distract me! I’m the type that can’t even pee when someone’s standing behind me!”_

_"If there were a way where neither side had to die, it would be where both sides revealed their insides, and hid nothing from each other, and poured each other drinks, and drank together like brothers.”_

_"But the question is, how do we change things concretely? We've got to have a vision for the future."_ _"The first steps are for us to not give up on our ideals and to get a lot stronger.”_

That day, sitting on the cliff with Madara, was the best day of his second life.

In one glorious moment, he saw the future stretch out, and for the first time, it wasn’t soaked in blood and mired in suffering. It sparkled and glistened in the sunlight with a hundred possibilities just waiting for the two of them to grab it. Hashirama could almost see it, in that instance - the village sprawled out below the cliff and the sound of children from all different clans’ laughter carried on the wind.

_“It will be a place where kids don't have to be sent into harsh battlefronts."_

_"It doesn’t sound bad at all."_

_"Then it's decided!"_

“Please,” he shouts over the noise, hoping to reach his friend’s heart. “We can have our village if we just make peace!”

“Stop smiling, you idiot!”

Hashirama smiles because it’s all he can do.

“Please!” He knows the boy determined to keep his last brother safe. With eyes that saw what could be, not what is. Who dared to dream of impossibilities, because how else would such things come to be? Human nature is to strive and to reach for something better, to dream of a better life and a better world. _That_ is quintessentially and undeniably human.

Madara was the only person he’s met in this war-torn world that embodied that principle. To him, Madara was a gift from the divine.

“That’s a child’s dream. We’re at war! We aren’t friends. You’re Senju and I’m Uchiha and that means we have to fight!”

“Please!” He begs again, his smile never losing its intensity. 

Tears gather in the corner of his eyes and he hopes Madara doesn’t see it, as his heart fractures and breaks and shatters a little bit more every time his desperately sincere plea is rejected.

“Please!”

**Author's Note:**

> There's a Bleach reference in there...
> 
> Let me know what you think?


End file.
